


Who Lays All the Best Laid Plans

by JennaCupcakes



Series: Beauty and the Devil [4]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Semi-Public Sex, graphic description of violence, the very bad not good finale to a fucked-up relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:20:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23159950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: For some, it's all coming together. For others, it's all falling apart. Arthur knows exactly which group he belongs to.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Dutch van der Linde
Series: Beauty and the Devil [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519049
Comments: 22
Kudos: 72





	Who Lays All the Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> After three months of being hellishly busy, I finally managed to finish the final installment of this series. There's nothing like all public life in your city shutting down to get you to write.
> 
> I will once again issue the warning that the consent between the characters is dubious at best in some cases, so tread with care.

_“Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.”_ – Jean Genet

* * *

“What happened in Guarma?”

“Nothing good.”

Arthur felt strange under Sadie’s gaze. It was different from the way the others had looked at him. Even Bill and Dutch and Micah hadn’t looked at him like that, and they’d seen what he’d seen on Guarma, or near all of it. Sadie’s gaze was cutting, made for assessing, made for getting to the heart of things. Arthur felt like she was going to say something but then she didn’t, and Arthur was glad.

Even speaking exhausted him these days.

* * *

Arthur had thought Guarma was lonely. But it was lonelier being back.

He kept looking around, waiting to find familiar faces, counting up and always coming up short. He kept making the rounds, pacing, but there was nothing that could bring back Hosea or Lenny or… John.

But Arthur wasn’t the worst of them.

Dutch was facing the swamp when Arthur found him, legs propped up on a crate. He looked like he was trying to emulate some of the nonchalance that had always come with his grandeur, but it was undercut by the muttering.

“Bishop to G2. Black to G6. Knight to… to… F3.”

Arthur wondered whether Dutch would drag them along, losing people until there was no one left other than him. Arthur wondered when he himself would fall by the wayside.

“Stay with me tonight.”

Dutch didn’t touch Arthur, but he looked like he wanted to. It tethered Arthur more than a touch would have. More than Dutch’s strong hand encircling his wrist ever could have. Dutch’s voice was quiet, like he was afraid someone might hear him, hear the weakness in his voice. Hear him asking for help.

Arthur looked from Dutch’s face to his hands, hanging limply at his sides, then back up to his face. It looked empty. Empty like the camp.

Arthur acquiesced, nodded. Dutch closed his eyes, something like relief flooding his face.

“Thank you.”

Arthur settled on the bed with trepidation. Inexplicably, he felt nervous – Dutch had had him inside out, but somehow, this felt different. Too intimate. They both weren’t men who stayed, though Arthur liked to imagine he could have been, once upon a time.

Dutch moved as though it didn’t bother him. He extinguished the candles, came to the bed, laid himself down. Let out a deep sigh. When he didn’t say anything anymore, Arthur went to lie down next to him.

In the dark, Dutch reached for him.

Below them, the water lapped quietly at the wood beams supporting the house. Given a decade, without further maintenance, rot would take the beam and it would give out. This little settlement was living on borrowed time, just like them.

The sounds of the swamp were muffled in here. The smells were as strong as outside, however, if not stronger – wet and briny and fragrant, so strong as to leave a taste in Arthur’s mouth. It made the room an extension of the swamp. The bed into a boat.

Dutch wrapped an arm around Arthur’s midsection, pulled him – back to chest – against him. Arthur could hear him sigh, could feel the exhalation on his neck. He felt small. Shrunken, somehow.

Was there a world in which they ever talked about this? A world in which the night didn’t belong to the night only, and the day only to the day?

“I can’t see it anymore.”

Dutch spoke so quietly that Arthur first thought he hadn’t understood him, until his brain processed the words.

“Hmm?”

“There’s nothing anymore, Arthur. No plan.”

Arthur struggled for words in the face of this admission. It frightened him. It felt like a bridge crossed, a journey that had started in Blackwater, when Dutch had wanted him to have faith, coming to an end. Now here they were – Dutch bar any faith, and Arthur still not the man to build him up.

“It’ll pass,” Arthur said, “You’ll figure it out in the end. And we’ll all wonder how we didn’t see it coming.”

The words were well-rehearsed. He knew his cues. Still, he was glad he didn’t have to look Dutch in the face saying them.

Dutch scoffed.

“Pretty words.”

It was odd, feeling Dutch’s breath on his neck. Arthur wasn’t a man who let his guard down like this.

“Is that how you get the girls?”

The whisper was darker, closer to Arthur’s ear. Dutch’s jealousy, maybe the secret he believed buried deepest. Arthur already knew it, knew his need for reassurance and control, and knew – at least since Blackwater – what he was not allowed to have anymore. No, he belonged to Dutch.

“I don’t,” Arthur said, “Not anymore.”

“Mh.” Dutch’s acquiescence was a rumble that shook through Arthur’s entire body. Dutch’s hand was idly teasing the fabric over Arthur’s crotch. The scheming, disguised as innocence.

Arthur wished he knew Dutch less well.

In the darkness, however, it was easier to pretend it was just the two of them. With the door closed, Arthur could block out the thought of their responsibilities, the people in their care, and how they were failing them. He could pretend it didn’t matter that Dutch didn’t have a plan, that he was just as scared and lost as the rest of them, that they were all doomed to the same fate.

Dutch breathed in deep, flattened his hand against Arthur’s stomach and pulled Arthur close. Arthur could feel the hard line of Dutch’s cock pressed against his ass.

Dutch’s hand wandered lower again. Arthur’s hips twitched forward, more responsive than he wanted to be.

“I need you with me,” Dutch whispered, “I need you to have my back.”

Always wanting, always needing. His hand snuck into Arthur’s pants, quickly and quietly. Arthur felt his breath catch in his throat, though he’d been so careful to keep it level. But Dutch knew how to touch him, deft hand stroking him to full hardness with practiced ease. And once again, Arthur couldn’t say anything, because Dutch had him. Dutch would keep him for as long as he wanted.

Cradled in Dutch’s arms, Dutch’s hand on his cock, Arthur couldn’t help the small noises that came out of his mouth. He’d never quite felt like this – shrunken, vulnerable. Dutch was murmuring in his ear – soft, crooning whispers, _‘my good boy, yes, that’s it, you’re so good for me_ ’ – and Arthur didn’t _want_ to like it, but the painful hardness of his erection seemed to spite his resolve. Being good for Dutch was all he knew how to be.

In the darkness of the cabin, he came over Dutch’s practiced hand, hips twitching, lips pressed together tightly against the keening noise that wanted to escape him. Dutch pulled him closer still and stroked him through it – Arthur couldn’t move, could only take what Dutch gave him until he was spent.

He made to turn around when Dutch let go of his cock, but Dutch held him in place.

“It’s alright, I’m tired.”

Arthur remained, stunned. With the buzz of arousal fading he found himself fidgeting, stuck in the uncomfortable position. But Dutch held him firm.

Under them, the water kept lapping at the wood beams. After a while, Dutch’s breathing evened out. Arthur tried to convince himself to leave until light shone through the cracks in the wood again.

* * *

Arthur woke, and then realized he was still dreaming.

In the dream, he was sitting by a campfire, though the camp was long gone – it looked like their old ones out on the prairie, the stars bright and the land wide around them. The fire crackled and gave off the comforting smell of woodsmoke, fragrant and dark.

Hosea was sitting by the fire.

“What I wanna know,” Hosea said, hat drawn deep into his face, shadows outlining his familiar features, “Is what you’re gonna do the day Dutch asks for something you’re not prepared to do.”

Something in Arthur felt so hollow at seeing Hosea, like his entire body was calling out to him, a warning that was weeks too late. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed him until this dream presented him with the perfect facsimile. The thing he’d never see again.

“Dutch wouldn’t,” Arthur said before he remembered they’d had this conversation before, and that Hosea was dead, and that all the things he’d ever loved were turning sour before his very eyes.

He woke up coughing and sweating.

Dutch was gone.

* * *

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

Sadie was in the process of methodically divesting the O’Driscoll bodies around them of all their valuables. She glanced back at Arthur for a second, as though to see what kind of reaction her question had elicited.

Arthur coughed – not blood but spit this time, caught aback. _Dutch has changed. We’ve all seen it._ And then –

“Oh, don’t be like that, Arthur, it’s a perfectly reasonable question.”

She had a way of cutting through things, Arthur had to give it to her. It was like she was anticipating all the deflections he wanted to throw up and then simply went around them. He looked at her, wanting to be angry but not quite finding the energy.

“I don’t know if you’d call it _love_ ,” he said, “It’s not like that with him.”

“Hah.” Sadie’s laugh was dry like underbrush before a forest fire was dry. “I can imagine.”

Arthur frowned, and Sadie patted his arm.

“Oh, big guy, we’ve all been there. We’ve all loved a man who’s just too happy to use us.”

* * *

There was a moment when Dutch looked at Arthur over the dead body of Molly O’Shea, between the trees, up in coarser land, where the air was cold and moist and free. A moment when Arthur thought he saw something more than just the present – he thought he saw a mountaintop and a sunrise, or maybe a cliffside covered in snow and a broken body at the foot of the cliff, but then his lungs seized up, the very air of the land seemed to turn on him and he doubled over trying to get the breath back into his lungs.

When he looked back, they had already taken Molly’s body away and Dutch had gone back to his tent, flaps closed. Micah was sitting at the table in front of it keeping watch like an idiotic lapdog. He grinned when he saw Arthur looking.

* * *

“Arthur, can you come here for a second?”

Arthur stopped in his tracks. Dutch still had that tone about him, the one he thought sounded like he had his emotions under control but that actually only betrayed how close he was to losing it.

Arthur turned, careful to keep himself between John and Abigail and Dutch. He was met by Dutch’s expectant stare and genial smile.

“Sure,” Arthur acquiesced.

What did he have to lose?

Micah was still hovering at Dutch’s shoulder, but Dutch waved him away as he led Arthur towards his tent and the caves. John caught Arthur’s sleeve as Arthur went, and Arthur just shook his head.

This was what they had come to. Two families, both alike in fucking dignity. Arthur would have laughed if it wasn’t breaking his heart.

Dutch led them a short way into the cave – deep enough to give them privacy but not far enough to lose their way in the dark, snaking tunnels. Whatever markings the Murfrees had used to navigate them, they were lost on Arthur.

If Dutch was gonna kill him for going after John, that was fine with Arthur.

“I would lecture you, if I thought you still had half a mind to listen to me.”

Arthur sighed and wished for the killing blow to come now rather than later. He didn’t have the patience to bear with Dutch’s bottomless justifications for every single one of his actions. Dutch could reason himself into anything. But reasoning himself into abandoning a man he’d raised as his son?

“I was simply doing what you taught me,” Arthur said, “We don’t leave folks behind, Dutch.”

“I know you think you have to take Hosea’s place now that he’s gone. It’s admirable of you. Makes you a good son.” Dutch shook his head, wearily. “But we both know that’s not your strength, Arthur.”

He put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, gave him a look of deep sympathy. “Leave the planning to me, alright?”

Arthur could only stare. Then –

“Fuck you,” he said.

Dutch pulled his hand away, and the look of sympathy disappeared.

“I had hoped you would see reason.”

“Reason?” Arthur said, “What reason is there in leaving a boy you raised?”

“The same reason that’ll keep us alive long enough so we can get out of here,” Dutch shot back, “But maybe your time horizon has just shortened too much to see that.”

The silence that fell after that reminded Arthur of the silence after a gunshot. He was waiting for the telltale smell of iron and gunpowder to hit him, or to feel the well of blood from somewhere on his body. But Dutch didn’t need to use his guns. He knew Arthur.

“Yeah, well, that’s on you,” Arthur said quietly.

Dutch scoffed. “You can’t blame me for all your bad decisions, Arthur.”

“You _made_ me –”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Dutch interjected, “I taught you that first, son. We’re free men. Never forget that. We don’t do nothing but what pleases us.”

Arthur hadn’t felt the levity of choice in a long time, only ever the burden of obligation and Dutch’s requests. Dutch might have taught him freedom, but he never taught him how to disobey him. Arthur had to figure that out on his own.

He wasn’t sure he’d quite gotten it yet.

“If they find us, that’ll be on you, Arthur. Or will you blame that on me, too?”

* * *

The landscape sprawled out in front of Arthur like a tapestry, the details too small to comprehend with the naked eye. It’d been a long time since he’d been up so high in the mountains that the trees themselves fell away, and he felt like a god towering over creation.

Rains Fall had his eyes fixed on the path ahead of him, and it made Arthur wonder how one could ever tire of such a view. He knew he should keep his eyes on the path and guide his horse, but he felt his eyes wander every couple of seconds. Rains Fall seemed to have more strength of character, or more good sense.

“Do you love your son?”

Arthur’s question surprised even him. Their conversation had been strange, ranging from banal to existential with seemingly nothing in between. Maybe the two were the same thing. Maybe there was nothing so banal that it was not existential at the same time. And Arthur had questions, questions that were killing him more than his lungs were sometimes, about life and all the ways he’d fucked it up.

He couldn’t ask Dutch anymore. He would have, once upon a time, and Dutch would have explained everything to him, but those days were gone, and Arthur was left wondering how much of it had ever been real.

“Of course I do.” Rains Fall turned in his saddle to look at Arthur with a puzzled expression. “Every father loves their children, deep down, I think. Some just haven’t learned to show it.”

The old man had a face that was very much like these mountains – it showed its age, but also its dignity, and all the things that had happened to him. Arthur felt more sympathy for him than good sense told him was reasonable. He was getting dragged into something he should have no part in.

“Only because –” Arthur took a deep breath. The air up here in the mountains was thin, and it made breathing harder and easier at the same time. “– well, maybe if you’d be stricter with him, you know. He wouldn’t run off so much.”

Rains Fall narrowed his eyes.

“It is because I love him that I give him this freedom.”

Arthur’s lack of understanding must have shown on his face.

“There is a difference between loving someone and smothering someone, Mister Morgan.”

* * *

They met back up outside of Saint Denis where they’d left the horses tied. Sadie had already taken her hat back off, and by the time Arthur got there she was getting changed while Dutch stood, with his back turned, smoking by the wagon.

“Did you get out ok?”

Arthur nodded. He didn’t trust his voice; his lungs were still burning from the ride in a way that made him painfully aware just how little life he was gambling with pulling these stunts. Dutch nodded back. Sadie emerged a little while later, buckling her gun belt. She looked pale but satisfied. Arthur was glad to see her out of the dress. It had unsettled him more than he’d realized.

“Feel better?” He asked.

She shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said. He knew that emptiness too well.

They mounted their horses. A couple of minutes later, only the dust settling slowly spoke of the fact they had ever been there at all.

Sadie split off first, with a grim nod as acknowledgment. Arthur wondered if she would finally collapse now, if this was the line that had kept her above water snapping. He’d want to be alone for that, if he was in her place.

Dutch and Arthur rode on, taking the long way North. Neither of them suggested splitting up. When night fell, they made camp together.

So long as nobody spoke, they could pretend everything was as it had been between them. It seemed to Arthur that everybody always looked younger in the firelight. It smoothed out the worry lines on Dutch’s face, the evidence of a life lived under the shadow of responsibility and away from the watchful eye of the law. It gave his complexion color back. Arthur hoped the light did him some of the same favors, so that he could be healthy in appearance at least.

They shared a meal of rabbit they had caught, just as Arthur and Hosea had done back when this whole mess had barely begun. Before it had shown its ugly face. Arthur wasn’t hungry but he ate. Everything had become an ordeal to him.

Dutch produced a bottle of whiskey. It spoke to the power of ingrained habits that they could still share a drink, even while their disagreements stood like watchers outside of the circle of the firelight.

The whiskey was honey-warm on Arthur's tongue. It soothed his throat.

He passed the bottle back to Dutch.

“Is this it?”

Arthur thought again of the sound of the wood creaking, then Colm’s neck snapping with a wet cracking sound. He wasn’t the first man Arthur had seen hang. Arthur realized that he might, however, be the last. If he was lucky.

“Hm?” Dutch had been lost in his own thoughts. When his eyes focused on Arthur, he appeared to look at him from far away.

“Is this what?”

Arthur pulled up one shoulder in a half-shrug, suddenly embarrassed.

“The finish line. Did we make it?”

Dutch smiled wistfully. He took a sip of the whiskey.

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it? The last foe, vanquished? Revenge, achieved?” He shook his head. “Rather poetic.”

“To your tastes, then.”

Dutch chuckled, the way he did when Arthur had clocked him right. He passed the bottle back to Arthur. Arthur held on to it, because he didn’t want to get drunk. Not yet. He leaned forward, closer to the fire, letting it paint deep shadows and stark contrasts on his face.

“Dutch...”

He had to say it. He had to ask one last time.

“Please. Let this be the end.”

At the sound of the desperation in Arthur’s voice, Dutch’s face hardened.

“Arthur.”

He sounded weary, bored.

“Listen to me, Dutch, please.” Arthur hated that he had enough hope left to try. Had he any good sense, he would have cut loose weeks ago.

“You’re tired,” Dutch said in that same patronizing tone in which he had explained to Arthur the necessity of their ordeal. “I know how exhausting this must be for you but believe me–“

He leaned forward, the firelight deepening the shadows on his face instead of illuminating it. “– We’re so close.”

For a brief moment, Arthur thought he could muster the energy for a retort. He felt the flare of indignation, like a calm fire brought to a bright flare by a sudden gust of wind, sending sparks flying and wood cracking. But it was gone just as quickly.

He didn't have it in him anymore.

* * *

“Let’s get you out of these clothes, come on.”

Arthur still felt like the world was slugging past him in slow motion. Dutch was already pulling him to his feet. Everything around him was sharp and bright, the colors unnatural. Dutch’s touch was burning. The sensations were all wrong.

They stumbled up a little ridge, dripping and panting, and Arthur felt twenty years younger. Behind them, the river roared, before them, the forest promised cover from the pursuing Army men.

Without speaking, they got a camp together, falling back into rhythms long established and familiar. Dutch got a fire going. After a little whistling and a lot of cursing, Arthur managed to locate their horses.

The chill began to set in when he returned to Dutch, horses in tow.

Dutch had stripped off his coat, waistcoat, and shirt. They were hanging to dry on the low branch of a pine, and Arthur saw the sense in that – with the wind as it was, the wet clothes cooled him down faster than he could afford.

Dutch took the reins from him, pulled the small tent from the back of the Count.

“Come on, get them off,” he said, motioning towards Arthur’s clothes, then began setting up the tent. Arthur started on the buttons of his waistcoat, but his fingers wouldn’t quite cooperate, cold as they were. He barely managed to get the waistcoat off, never mind his shirt, by the time Dutch had finished the tent.

Dutch _tsk_ -ed when he saw Arthur’s poor progress. He stepped in front of Arthur, swatted his hands away.

“Let me.”

He stripped Arthur quickly, Arthur just standing there, struck dumb as the adrenaline in his body ebbed away and the crash hit him, jelly-like in its consistency.

When Dutch was done stripping him, he pulled off his own remaining clothes.

“Fire,” he ordered, directing Arthur to a spot in front of it, tent at his back. Arthur sat, gratefully, and the warmth flooded his bones and thawed his fingers and his mind. Dutch fitted himself behind Arthur, pulling them chest-to-back. Arthur couldn’t tell if it was the familiarity of the touch or the warmth of Dutch’s skin that had him relaxing into it. Relief clouded his brain, making him lightheaded.

“That was fucking close.”

He was half laughing, half coughing as he said it.

“It was,” Dutch agreed, and his voice had the same manic quality to it, so full of giddy relief it was hard to contain.

“It’s a miracle we didn’t hit any rocks,” Arthur said.

Dutch nodded solemnly. “Faith, Arthur.”

Arthur just laughed, then coughed again until it shook his body to its core, painful and deep. Dutch held him through it, rubbed his back until Arthur stopped wheezing. He didn’t ask how Arthur was doing.

Arthur settled back into Dutch’s arms. His skin was drying fast. He could feel all of his toes again. He sighed.

“That felt…”

“Almost like old times?” Dutch suggested.

Arthur twisted in Dutch’s arms, turning around to get a look at him. There was a smile playing on Dutch’s lips – Arthur was tempted to read into it but knew better, trying not to look for nostalgia on Dutch’s face anymore. It was hard when things were like this.

God, he missed Dutch. Even when he hated the man, he missed him.

“Yeah,” Arthur said, hoarsely. He held Dutch’s gaze for a little longer.

Nothing happened. He turned back, feeling a creeping chill despite the fire.

“We’re both not that young anymore,” Dutch said.

But they were both still here, Arthur thought. They were both alive.

Arthur hoped Dutch would just give in, deliver him, turn him around and kiss him or make Arthur suck his cock until Arthur forgot his own fucking name. But Dutch didn’t. Maybe this was a challenge.

Arthur kissed him.

He hadn’t meant to, and then he had, all at once – fiercely, desperately, as if he could reach back through time ten, twenty years and seize the man that Arthur had thought Dutch was, once upon a time. And Dutch kissed him back like he was desperate enough to match Arthur. Like he wanted to be that man.

Arthur turned around in Dutch’s arms, pinned Dutch to the ground. He was breathing heavily. It occurred to him dimly that they had never been together like this, both of them naked, rough skin on rough skin, and that excited him, though it was the stupidest possible time, with the US army on their tail, and all the things that had already broken between them. Arthur couldn’t fucking care less.

Dutch’s legs were bare against his, the whole expanse of his skin warm against Arthur. Dutch was cursing between sharp kisses, and Arthur felt inclined to agree – he bit at Dutch’s bottom lip instead, rolled his hips down to press their cocks together.

Dutch growled, hand snapping forward to seize one of Arthur’s wrists. Arthur only had a second to brace himself before Dutch threw him off and pinned Arthur to the ground, the move coming more easily than it used to because Arthur had deteriorated sharply over the last few weeks. Dutch took Arthur’s other wrist and pinned them both above Arthur’s head.

Arthur sucked in a breath that was more of a rattle, all desperation and the feeling of his lungs giving up on him, and Dutch just held him there as he gasped and coughed, twisting a nipple between his fingers absentmindedly and adding arousal to the causes of lightheadedness in Arthur’s brain.

Dutch fell over him hungrily, kissing Arthur like he was determined to take the last of him before Arthur disappeared under his hands. It filled the empty part in Arthur’s chest to believe Dutch still wanted, Dutch still _needed_ him.

Dutch didn’t let him move, but Arthur was used to that. When Dutch got so desperate it ate at his brain, he needed Arthur to regain control. It had always been like that, and so it seemed right.

He wasn’t young anymore. He was dying. And yet, when Dutch wrapped a hand around his cock, Arthur felt as young and alive as he hadn’t in a good long while.

Dutch’s dark eyes were on Arthur the entire time, watching as Arthur shook when Dutch stroked him slowly, doing it again just to draw another reaction from Arthur. Arthur held his gaze, his breath coming heavily, and it drove him near despair to see the intent in Dutch’s eyes.

God but he wanted him. He felt stupid with it, but he wanted him.

Dutch leaned down to kiss Arthur again, savoring it this time. Arthur felt his breath catch somewhere high in his chest, like he was so full of this feeling it threatened to drown him. The kiss was sharp and too desperate, Dutch’s teeth clacking against Arthur’s, but it felt so raw and honest that Arthur didn’t care.

“Dutch,” Arthur panted when Dutch broke away, “I need you, please, I…”

He flushed, clamping his mouth shut before anything more revealing could spill out.

“ _Not here_ ,” Dutch hissed, and he sounded like it broke him. God, he sounded like it broke him.

All Arthur wanted was to feel Dutch inside him, buried so deep that it split him in two. He would kill for that right now. He might very well be willing to die for it.

Dutch rolled his hips down against Arthur’s, pressing their cocks together. The cold stone of the cliff was digging into Arthur’s back painfully. He made a broken sound.

Dutch lowered himself over Arthur, until there was barely a piece of their skin that wasn’t touching. His weight on Arthur’s chest was heavy, smothering, comforting, perfect. Arthur’s body was thrumming with arousal.

“I still got you, Arthur,” Dutch murmured, quiet over the sound of blood rushing in Arthur’s ears. Arthur believed him in that moment.

Dutch got a hand between them, took both their cocks in his hand. The firm touch of the familiar hand melted Arthur, and he closed his eyes and felt only the wind and the stone and Dutch’s warm skin, the smell of pines and woodsmoke and Dutch’s body. He could die in this moment. He was immortal in this moment.

He brought a hand up to the side of Dutch’s face, then sunk it into his hair. Dutch gasped quietly, and his grip around their cocks tightened. Arthur’s toes curled with the intensity of it. He rocked his hips up into Dutch’s fist and Dutch swore into Arthur’s neck, muffling the desperate sounds he was making into Arthur’s skin.

Arthur didn’t have so much discretion.

“Please, Dutch, I’m close, I’m– “

“Yes, yes, I know– “

Dutch’s hand was moving faster between them, and Arthur opened his eyes to this endless expanse of sky above him and the reassuring weight of Dutch’s body keeping him tethered to the earth, keeping him pinned to the ground, and he felt his release as a hot surge through his entire body. He was shaking, felt like he was coming undone at the edges where his consciousness was drifting away into the stone and the sky around him. Felt Dutch’s release almost as an afterthought, and the keening noise he made – like someone shot him, exactly like that – bled into the background of the birds and the rushing river.

For a moment, Arthur let the nothingness take him.

* * *

When he came back to, the sun was lower on the horizon and a persistent cold had settled over him. Autumn, coming to the North. Dutch was sitting by the fire, staring into the flames like he was trying to divine their future from them. He had covered Arthur with a blanket, at least, and maneuvered him onto a bedroll. Maybe not all was lost.

Arthur chided himself for that thought. No. Whatever strange desperation had taken a hold of him; he’d seen the kind of man Dutch had become. He was beyond turning back. Had been for a long time.

Arthur sat up gingerly, and his bones ached. His skin hurt where it had been rubbed raw on the stone. He went to retrieve his clothes and put them on, then scooted up close to the fire.

“Eagle Flies must’ve been captured,” Dutch said, apropos of nothing.

“Or killed,” Arthur added darkly. Dutch looked up at him briefly, and the look in his eyes seemed to speak of the disappointment over the fact that they were at odds again. Then again, Arthur might have been projecting.

“We should help him,” Arthur said. He thought again of Rains Fall, and of what it would cost him to lose his son.

“Charles,” Dutch decided.

Arthur felt a surge of protectiveness – he didn’t want to send Charles anywhere near the fort. But then who were they going to send? It was too late for any of them, far too late.

And Dutch just kept offering them up on his altar, sacrificial lambs that they were.

“I’ll find him,” Arthur said wearily, “Let him know what happened.”

He contemplated sticking around. The part of him that wanted to was also the part that believed if he tried hard enough, spoke the right words, prostrated himself before Dutch in the right way, then Dutch would see reason again. There was no saving him anymore. Arthur should know better.

He got up.

“I’ll see you back at camp,” he said. Dutch nodded, clearly lost in his own thoughts again.

He didn’t look like he cared much about what happened to Eagle Flies.

* * *

It was early morning when Arthur finally found himself on the last stretch of road to Beaver Hollow, too early for the sun to have risen. The exhaustion sat in his bones now, he could feel it, the riding and the shooting and then carrying Eagle Flies the long way home up to the reservation. He had the kid’s blood still on his hands and wanted nothing more than to wash and collapse on his cot. He’d earned that much.

“So you decided to come back.”

The form of the horse – ghostly pale, a skittish shadow among the dark trees – was more visible than the man atop it, but Arthur knew him. And he was not in the mood for Dutch, and his words, and his accusations.

“You left me.”

Dutch steered the Count in Arthur’s path, dark eyes fixed on him.

“Son, we’ve been over this.”

Arthur got off his horse and marched the last meters towards Dutch. Dutch met him on equal ground.

“You left me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Arthur had walked up to Dutch, but now Dutch stepped in his space. His hand reached down, taking a hold of Arthur’s crotch and exerting the palest bit of pressure. It hurt, and it galled him that Dutch thought he could control him like that, but his knees shook, too. Dutch knew how to touch him.

He angrily yanked Dutch’s hand away.

“I ain’t in the mood for this, Dutch.”

Dutch’s eyes narrowed.

“Is that so?”

He backhanded Arthur.

It came unexpected, and he only felt the sting blooming when Dutch was already shaking out his hand. He tasted blood and realized he must have bitten his tongue.

“I’ve never known you to be so ungrateful, Arthur,” Dutch said, his voice an autumn storm building up to full strength. He used to be able to control himself better, Arthur thought, but lately Dutch’s outbursts left him panting and ugly, his face mottled red and his eyes wild.

“Maybe you’re the one who’s ungrateful,” Arthur spat. God, he’d never wanted to kill Dutch so much. He knew how easy it would be – he probably wouldn’t even have to draw his gun, though that was the safer option. If he took two quick steps up to Dutch before the man turned, he could trip him, get a knee on his chest and choke him until he turned blue. He’d done it before, on Dutch’s insistence, to more men than he cared to count.

For a moment, it seemed the right thing to do. But the moment passed. Instead, Dutch came back to Arthur, tilted his head and struck a calming note, his voice pitched in that low manner that Arthur even heard in his dreams sometimes.

“Arthur,” he said, “I think sometimes you forget all the things I’ve done for you, hm?”

He held Arthur’s gaze, caught Arthur’s chin in his hand when Arthur wanted to turn away.

“I raised you. I gave you a home, and a purpose.”

He had to keep looking, even though Dutch’s gaze was of almost painful intensity.

“You’d be nothing without me, Arthur. Consider that the next time you think I’d do anything that wasn’t in your best interest.”

He let go of Arthur’s chin and took a few steps back, busying himself with the Count’s saddle. Arthur’s heart was beating painfully hard, or maybe it was the pain in his chest that had him sag backwards against a boulder by the side of the road. The air was thick with the rich scent of the forest, so fragrant that Arthur found it hard to breathe all of a sudden. His vision swam. He coughed.

“Well?”

Dutch’s voice cut through the haze, and when Arthur’s vision cleared, he saw Dutch half turned back towards him, still facing the Count but watching Arthur out of the corner of his eye.

“What?” Arthur wheezed; voice thin because he had to use what little air he could still get sparingly.

“Don’t you think you owe me an apology?”

He’d left Arthur. Say what he want, he’d left Arthur.

“You _left_ me, Dutch.”

“Oh, so we’re still singing that song.” Dutch let his head hang for a moment, in all his false disappointment, the act that Arthur knew so well and that had always, always worked on him because he’d only ever learned how to thrive under Dutch’s approval. “Well, I did warn you.”

He came back to Arthur slowly, giving the impression of leaving Arthur ample time to run. If he could still run. Dutch had to know how easy of a target Arthur was most of these days.

He took a hold of Arthur’s upper arm with one hand – holding him firmly, eyes fixed on Arthur, while Arthur was taking heaving breaths and trying to kill Dutch with looks.

“I told you—” Arthur began, and then Dutch shoved a leg between Arthur’s and Arthur’s protest of _ain’t in the mood_ died on its way out of his throat. Dutch cradled the back of Arthur’s head with his other hand, tilted it back so Arthur had to look up at him.

“Maybe I’m too lenient with you. But I know you don’t mean it when you say these things, Arthur. You just don’t know how to ask for what you want, do you?”

Arthur opened his mouth to protest – was Dutch deliberately misunderstanding him? – but Dutch leaned forward and pressed his lips to Arthur’s, choking Arthur’s protests.

He wanted to kill Dutch. He wanted to push him away and knock him to the ground and beat at his face until it bore no resemblance to the man anymore. Instead he had to focus on his breathing as Dutch pressed closer to him, and Arthur could feel his body reacting despite the anger burning in his gut. Because being good for Dutch was all he knew how to be, even when he wanted to kill him.

Dutch’s hands found purchase on Arthur’s shirt. A quick tug let the buttons give way, exposing Arthur’s chest to the air and Dutch’s hands. Arthur’s breath quickened, and it hurt.

Dutch broke the kiss, pulled back enough to consider Arthur’s gaunt form and prominent ribs with a scowl on his face. Arthur wanted to say something about how it was all Dutch’s fault, that he’d ended up like this, but then Dutch pulled him forward and shoved him to his knees and Arthur went, too stunned to really put up a fight.

Dutch began unbuckling his belt, and Arthur made to get up because there was no way in hell he was going to let this happen but Dutch sank a hand into his hair and pushed Arthur back down, with enough force that Arthur – not after the riding and the fighting and the near dying – couldn’t muster anything against.

Dutch shoved his cock into Arthur’s mouth. Arthur’s lungs were burning as he gasped for air when he could, but Dutch had him, both hands securely on the side of Arthur’s face, pushing him down on his cock.

“See—” Dutch was breathing heavy, undone by just the heat of Arthur’s mouth around him, or more likely by the absolute submission he’d forced on Arthur. “– you and I both know this is where you belong. I could never leave you, could I? Not when I need you like this, son.”

Arthur wanted to thrash and fight and throw Dutch off. Arthur wanted to swallow Dutch’s cock until he choked on it so he could die in peace. His vision was foggy, his thoughts a sluggish haze that was only punctuated by the sharp spike of Dutch pulling his hair that kept Arthur hard in his own pants. Dutch was thrusting into his mouth, each push losing a little bit of the restraint Dutch kept himself under.

“Going behind my back. You’d almost think I didn’t take care of you. A lesser man might call you ungrateful.”

Arthur pressed a hand to his own crotch, trying to find some relief while Dutch had him pinned like this, but Dutch kicked his hand away. Arthur would have sobbed if his mouth hadn’t been stuffed full of Dutch’s cock, and he _did_ sob when Dutch pressed the tip of his boot against Arthur’s crotch.

“Don’t say I never do anything for you,” Dutch snarled, forcing himself deeper into Arthur’s mouth. Arthur just let the tears run down his cheeks now, closing his eyes against the pain. The press of Dutch’s boot was cruel, inexorable, like it would kill Arthur if it went on long enough, and still he couldn’t help rutting up against it.

“Remember this, Arthur,” Dutch whispered, his voice hoarse and choked with pleasure, the way it got when he was close, “Remember this is what only I can give you.”

He pressed his boot down harder and Arthur, desperately, stumbled over the edge of his orgasm like it was a chasm that had just opened up before him, the ground splitting to swallow him whole, but it barely registered, because Dutch shot down his throat not seconds after and Arthur had to fight not to choke.

Dutch let go of his hair and Arthur fell on his side, hacking blood and come and spit onto the pine-needle cover dusting the road. He was still coming, cock pulsing weakly in his pants as his body twitched on the forest floor. He let it wreck through his body. He curled up, feeling the wet patch in his own pants move uncomfortably against his skin. He wanted to get up but couldn’t, still coughing up blood, his body shaking with the force of the attack. And when it subsided, it left Arthur trembling, and the blurry image of Dutch getting on his horse in his field of vision.

“Pay close attention,” Dutch said as he swung a leg over the Count, keeping his gaze on Arthur prone on the forest floor. “ _Now_ I’m leaving you, son.”

* * *

The scene was repeated a couple of days later, Arthur with blood in his mouth and fire in his lungs watching Dutch walk away. Maybe Dutch would stop. Maybe he’d turn around and tell Arthur that he’d just needed to make the lesson stick. Yes, Arthur hated him, or maybe he wanted to hate him, but he also wanted nothing more than to see Dutch look at him one last time.

It wasn’t going to happen, Arthur thought. Then he didn’t think anything anymore for a small while, as he heaved his body up against some rocks overlooking the valley. It felt like the fire of the sunset was burning in his lungs. Something had dislodged in his chest, a painful stabbing sensation that worsened the pain in his lungs.

He’d take care of it when he woke up, he thought. He just needed to rest for a minute.

* * *

_“The sun sped cross the plains like that cinematic moment where  
humanity and nature collide  
when you think, _‘Everything’s gonna be alright, _’  
just before the hero gets a bullet in his side.”_

\- Owen Pallett, Tryst With Mephistopheles

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on tumblr at [veganthranduil](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Again, please do consider leaving me a comment. They meant the world to me, and I think we can all use a bit of brightness in our days in these times.
> 
> **Edit** : There is [ART](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23655946/chapters/58350682) now. This is not a drill.


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